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Posts Tagged ‘Global Strategy Forum’

When Lord Lothian invited International Development Minister Alan Duncan to address the Global Strategy Forum at the National Liberal Club today on the Arab Spring three years on, he can have had no inkling that Mr Duncan would be ministerially defenestrated the previous night. But in a way that was an advantage as the speaker was therefore bound by no government conventions and limitations and was able to give a wide-ranging yet penetrating overview of recent events in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). I liked his concept of “3D” British foreign policy, i.e. diplomacy, development and defence working in conjunction, and he has clearly put his experience in the oil industry to good use while in office, though he was pretty pessimistic about developments in Libya, in particular. I queried him on Egypt, as he’d said the West was maybe too quick to welcome the ousting of Hosni Mubarak; surely, I said, the West has been too quick to welcome the arrival of Field Marshal Sisi, given the appalling current record of torture and imprisonment, which has even affected journalists working for international media outlets, such as my former BBC colleague, and now Al Jazeera journalist, Peter Greste? Where Alan Duncan and I were much more aligned was when he spoke of the need to approach the Arab-Israeli conflict from a position of principle — in other words recognising the compound injustice (and indeed humiliation) perpetrated against the Palestinians by successive governments of Israel. It would have been good to press him further on his hints at possible consequences of the tensions between different Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, but maybe now he is more of a free agent it will be possible to winkle more out of him in such important debates.

The Global Strategy Forum can hardly have realised just how topical today’s lunchtime event at the National Liberal Club would be by focusing on “Crisis in Ukraine, Crisis in Russian-Western Relations: What Next?”. There was an interesting line-up of speakers, including my old BBC World Service colleague, Oleksiy Solohubenko, a SkyNews reporter and presenter, Andrew Wilson, a former British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Andrew Wood, and Labour’s last Europe Minister, Chris Bryant MP. Diplomats from both the Russian and Ukrainian embassies also chipped in from the floor, not surprisingly seeing what has been happening recently in Crimea and eastern Ukraine very differently. The West is still protesting about the de facto annexation of Crimea by Russia, though unofficially accepting this as a fait accompli. But the real concern is how much further Russian encroachment could go, in response to the declaration of “independence” by pro-Russian activists in Donetsk, unrest in other parts of Ukraine and indeed in other regions in Russia’s orbit, including Moldova (Transdniester), Belarus and maybe even Kazakhstan. Most speakers on the panel painted Vladimir Putin as the villain, though Chris Bryant told the rather chilling anecdote that a Russian diplomat had told him that Putin is “not yet mad”, the implication being that he could well become so if he sticks around much longer. In the meantime it does seem likely that Putin is now one of the richest men on the planet, if not the richest, though he manages to hide his assets from public view. Sir Andrew Wood made the point that Russia is weakened by the fact that it relies so heavly on hydrocarbons and indeed could at some stage run out of money. So even if Putin and his at the moment largely adoring compatriots may be on a roll at the moment, things may deteriorate for Moscow quite quickly. The panel side-stepped the question put by the Ukrainian diplomat as to whether the EU and US should now impose the third and far more serious range of sanctions it has threatened against Russia. Certainly, the limited sanctions against a small group of named targets have proved little more than a gentle slap on the wrist. But the ball is currently in the court of the Russians and their supporters in eastern Ukraine, and what they do will now determine what happens next.

This Saturday Afghans will go to the polls to elect a new President to replace Hamid Karzai. As NATO troops are also being wound down it’s an opportune moment to examine whether Western intervention in Afghanistan has achieved its intentions. As was made clear at an excellent seminar put on by the Global Strategy Forum in the National Liberal Club this lunchtime, the answer to that question very much depends on how one’s defines those intentions. In the narrowest sense, yes, Al Qaeda lost its operational base and the Taliban government was ousted, though the Taliban are still a force to reckoned with on the ground. Rory Stewart MP — who worked in both Afghanistan and Iraq — argued that a certain degree of stability has been achieved in some areas, despite recent setbacks, and highlighted developmental achievements such as the Turquoise Mountain Foundation which helps artisans market their produce abroad. Caroline Wyatt of the BBC talked of advances that have been made by Afghan women — though most would still think it impossible to carry on working after marriage. The Afghan Ambassador pointed out that these days 21 million Afghans have access to a mobile phone and many young people in Kabul have got into social media. Certainly the relationship between Mr Karzai and NATO forces — particularly the Americans — has been difficult over the last few years and there is no guarantee that the new president will be able to maintain even the uneasy calm that currently exists. The panel thought it unlikely that the Taliban will simply take over again — and were certain that they would not try to impose the same sort of extreme religion-based policies if they did. I have only been to Afghanistan once, in 1969, travelling overland on my way back from the Vietnam War, but I loved the country, with its wild terrain and colourful people. They have suffered a lot since then and certainly deserve a quieter future, and one that is determined by Afghans, not by outsiders.

Victorian Britain was associated with gunboat diplomacy and there are still some people in this country who think of power in terms of military might. But since the Second World War, Britain’s “soft power” has been more in evidence, not least through the work of the British Council and the BBC World Service. The Council’s Director, Sir Martin Davidson, was the guest speaker at a Global Strategy Forum event at the National Liberal Club this lunchtime and underlined how the teaching of English abroad and the fact that so many foreign students come to the UK to study both help this country’s economy as well as its global presence. Without overtly criticising the Government for not increasing the Council’s presence around the globe (in stark contrast to China’s Confucius Institutes, for example) Sir Martin did nonetheless point out that the negative coverage in the Indian Press of the immigration and visa debates in the UK had directly led to a fall in the number of students from India applying to study here. I asked him what the British Council is doing or could be doing to counter the pernicious influence of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and UKIP on our reputation not just in India but globally, without getting an entirely satisfactory answer; but of course to be seen publicly to criticise influential British media might be difficult in Sir Martin’s position. Politicians and journalists need not operate under such constraints, however, which is why I spend so much of my time offering an alternative British narrative to that served up in the right-wing red-tops or the Faragistas’ pubs. The UK does still have a degreee of soft power, though it is redcued because of reductions to the budgets of the British Council and the ludicrous decision to integrate the World Service into the main BBC new and current affairs output. That soft power is increased by our membership of the European Union and is often a force for good in the wider world, which is why those of us who believe that need to stand up and say so.

There were many sleep-deprived eyes in the David Lloyd George room at the National Liberal Club this lunchtime when the Global Strategy Forum held a panel debate on US Foreign Policy perspectives the day after the presidential poll. At least we knew the election result, which would not have been the case 12 years ago. And not surprisingly, most of the people present — including many foreign diplomats –were pleased that Barack Obama has been returned. But will this make much difference to US Foreign Policy, now that he doesn’t have to worry about re-election? Dare he be brave? Panelists Anatol Lieven (King’s College London), Michael Cox (LSE) and Mark Fitzpatrick (IISS) didn’t really think so. I raised the point that Obama had raised high hopes in the Arab and wider Muslim worlds when he made a speech in Cairo in 2009 shortly after his inauguration suggesting he would be more responsive to the concerns of that region, but he has deeply disappointed most people there since. The panel’s view was that not only does any US President personally come under great pressure from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, but also Congress would never stomach a fundamental realignment of US policy in the Middle East. It was significant that in the Obama-Romney foreign policy TV debate, Israel was mentioned 34 times (and the UK precisely once). The issue of how America is ‘pivoting’ away from the transatlantic relationship to be more concerned about links to East Asia was raised at the Global Strategy Forum event and a couple of the speakers uttered the word that usually dare not speak its name in discussions about US politics: decline. Personally, I believe the US will hasten that decline from the undoubted Number 1 global spot if it does continue to stand so firmly behind right-wing Israeli governments, to the detriment of its reputation almost everywhere else. So we left the NLC gathering this afternoon discouraged by the lack of any hope for real, positive change in Washington’s world view — but also relieved by the understanding that a Romney victory would have been so much worse.

This lunchtime at the National Liberal Club I was a member of a panel discussing the inevitability or otherwise of war between the West and Iran, held under the auspices of the Global Strategy Forum, which is chaired by Lord Lothian (aka Michael Ancram). The place was packed as the subject could hardly have been more topical and there were three fine other speakers: Sir Malcolm Rifkind (former Foreign Secretary), Sir Jeremy Greenstock (former UK Ambasador to the UN) and Dr Arhsin Adib-Moghaddam, a colleague of mine at SOAS. There was sufficient variety of views for a lively debate and some useful input from the audience, which included many Ambassadors, several members of the House of Lords and a number of journos, including Frank Gardner and Nick Childs from the BBC. We speakers were allotted just eight minutes each, so I used my time first to make the general point that whereas there are sometimes justifiable wars — recent examples being the Coalition that ousted the Iraqis from Kuwait in 1991, and the intervention last year in Libya under the principle of Responsibility to Protect — in general War is an admission of failure. I do not believe that war with Iran is either inevitable or desirable, despite the regime’s apparent desire to develop nuclear weapons (strongly denied officially in Tehran, of course). I worry about the rachetting up of pressure on Tehran by several Western governments, including and in particular that of Britain, whose own history of interference in Iran’s affairs has an inglorious past. I stressed that an atomosphere needs to be created in which there could be meaningful multilateral talks, with no pre-conditions (a view contested by Malcolm Rifkind). We should also respect Iran as a great civilization, I argued, as well as a country whose people understandably feel surrounded and threatened, not least by US bases on the other side of the narrow Persian Gulf. And I concluded by proposing a Middle East conference that would look at the whole region — including the Palestinian issue — and not just Iran in isolation. All the countries of the region, including Israel, shnold be present, and although Western countries, including the EU and US, might facilitate such a gathering ( a point also made by Jeremy Greenstock), we in the West should not try to run the show or dictate an outcome. That era has passed, and rightly so.